I'm really excited because next weekend I'll be doing something I've never done before: signing (and hopefully selling) books at the First Annual Bay Area Book Festival Family Day. It's a day-long book festival just for kids, with more than 90 authors of picture books, chapter books, and middle-grade (MG) and young adult (YA) books.
I'm one of 25 San Francisco Bay Area kidlit authors (Children's Literature...if you say it that way it includes middle-grade and YA books too.) chosen for the BABF Family Day Market.
I was first off just really excited to be one of "The Chosen" 25. This will be my first book festival - the first time I've been at a book festival as an author. When "The Pack, The Dare, and The Draugar" came out, it was summer 2021. We were in full Covid lockdown. No one was doing live events. No launch party. No book readings. No book festivals. Nada. Zip.
I did my first book reading and author Q&A just last September in my hometown. (Thanks, Community Shops!) So when I saw the Bay Area Book Festival was creating a stand-alone, one day event just for kids books, and accepting applications to be an author/book vendor there, I jumped on it. And I got accepted. So I was super happy. and then later on I found out that there are going to be a TON of famous kidlit authors at the Family Day festival. One of them lives in Sonoma County, just a town away from me: Sebastopol author Megan McDonald, award-winning writer of the “Judy Moody” and “Stink” novel series for middle-graders, as well as award-winning picture books and new young adult fiction books, will be one of the story-time presenters for young children. And then there's Kamilla Benko, author of the Unicorn Quest books - wow! And graphic novel author Nidhi Chanani - her latest one is Pashmina. You'd recognize all her covers from the book store. And there's Traci Chee - she wrote The Reader series. She was also a National Book Award Finalist for "We Are Not Free" - a historic fiction novel about a group of Japanese-American teens who are rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. So. Many. Great. Authors. You can click here to see a list of all the presenting authors. Click here - then click on their photos to go to their bios. Soooo I'll be among the famous. That always makes me nervous, honestly. If you're there come by and see me! I'll give you a free book mark. Then go see all the other authors!
Oh, yeah, The Bay Area Book Festival Family Day 2024 is Saturday, May 4, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library Central Branch at 2090 Kittredge St. The Big One. It's at the corner of Kittredge and Shattuck streets. One upside I did not think of for this whole adventure: I now know how to spell Kittredge off the top of my head.
